


Abiding

by XFilesinAMajor



Series: GLOW [5]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:15:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22518352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XFilesinAMajor/pseuds/XFilesinAMajor
Summary: A brief summary of the life (and death, and afterlife) of Horace--the youngest and least living of the Kettle boys.
Series: GLOW [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1574239
Comments: 4
Kudos: 3





	Abiding

My name is Horace Allen Holmes. I was born on July 7, 1910, in the living room of my parents’ home in Gravity Falls, Oregon. I died on March 28, 1921, in the same place.

The first ten and a half years of my life were fairly unremarkable. At least, I suppose they were—I don’t have any memory of the first two or three, honestly. My father was the town doctor, which meant we could afford a nice home, and my mother always made sure there were plenty of fresh-baked rolls and jam for when we were feeling hungry.

I miss feeling hungry. Is that a strange thing to miss? I don’t remember it being pleasant, but I miss it anyway.

I had an older sister named Caroline. She was only a year older, but she was smart. She used to read me stories, before I’d learned more than a few letters. My mother played piano—I never thought to ask where or when she learned it, and now I’ll never have the chance—in the evenings sometimes, and Caroline and I sang along sometimes. It was always warm in the living room, near the big pipe stove. Mother used to sing when she was baking rolls, too. It was a happy sound.

It was a happy house. I know there were days my father came home from work in a terrible mood, or a grim one, and Mother would explain quietly that he’d seen a bad illness or accident at work. I know one year my baby brother Edwin came down with pneumonia, and we all thought he was going to die. I said I wish he would, though I don’t like admitting I ever said anything so cruel. I was a little kid then, though. I didn’t know what dying actually meant, I just knew it meant Eddie would stop crying and drooling on my toys. If I’d known…but I didn’t.

I fell off the roof of the house when I was nine. I hit my head pretty good and broke my arm. Eddie used to say that he wished _I’d_ died, then. I always kind of wondered if he felt bad about that, after I did.

Our parents taught me how to read and write before I started going with Caroline to the public school. I didn’t care for my teacher much, but I loved all the books. On Sundays, we’d all dress up and go to church. I hated having to sit silently during the readings. Eddie got to look at picture books, but I had to pay attention. After the readings, we got to go to Sunday school, and I liked that part. We’d draw pictures and learn about plagues and miracles and all sorts of exciting things. I wanted to be a newspaper reporter when I grew up.

I never did. All the snow was melting at the start of spring and Eddie and Caroline and I were trying to make the most of it before it was gone. Our house is on a little hill, and we were sledding in the street. Stupid, I know. It was my turn, and a car came down the street right when I zipping across. I saw it coming and was scared, but I thought I was going to make it. If the sled hadn’t hit a bump of ice and tipped over, I would have.

The only thing I really remember after that is Caroline screaming. Then…I hurt, so I don’t think I was dead yet. It was hard to stay awake. There was lots of shouting. I stopped hurting. I opened my eyes and saw the ceiling of our living room. They must have moved me inside. But I couldn’t feel anything. I heard my father’s voice. And then there was nothing for a long, long time.

I don’t know why I came back. I didn’t mean to. I don’t know if the stories they told me in Sunday school were true, because I was never anywhere besides my house. It could be true. I just don’t know.

I started out as almost nothing. A few years had passed. My family didn’t live there anymore. The family who lived in the house now seemed nice, but nobody noticed me. I was like air, no one could see me or hear me. I couldn’t even see myself, but I knew I was there. It was so frustrating! After a while I gave up and just watched the family. Susy and Jack Richardson. I watched them go from being younger than me to growing up and moving out, and they never even knew.

I couldn’t leave the house, either. I tried, loads of times. The 30s were the worst.

Jack died in the war. I know because I saw his parents get the letter, saw them cry. I felt like I’d lost my best friend. And I remember thinking it was so unfair, because I knew how he died, but I didn’t know what had happened to my own sister. Susy got married and came home to visit a few times with her husband and baby. After a while their parents got old and moved somewhere else, and I never saw any of them again.

No one bought the house for a while. I worked on making myself visible. By the time the next family moved in, I could manifest as a smoky outline of myself. I kept at it, and by the end of the 50s I could actually see myself again. It was clearer when I was looking at myself in a mirror—then I could concentrate on my snub nose, freckles, and straw-yellow hair that never lay flat. Even when I wasn’t in front of a mirror, though, I could hold onto the image. It just wasn’t solid.

The family that lived in my house then didn’t like me much. The father pretended he couldn’t see me, but the mother screamed every time I came in the room. I didn’t like upsetting them, so I didn’t manifest much when they were home. They only stayed a year or two, anyway.

Families came and went. I watched them and got stronger. I practiced talking when I was alone, and got to where people could hear it as a whisper. That was pretty exciting, but people didn’t like that much either.

In the 70s there was a family with a little girl who liked me. She was six, and her name was Evelyn. Evelyn didn’t scream when I manifested, and she didn’t go pale when I talked. She listened to me. She tried to play with me and even hug me, and it made me so sad when she couldn’t touch me. I figured out that if I concentrated, the same way I did when I was learning to appear, if I concentrated _really hard_ , I could make things move. Just a little bit.

Evelyn didn’t care. She was happy to tell me about her day and let me read her stories just like Caroline used to do for me. She’d get the big storybooks down from the shelves and turn the pages, and I’d read the words to her. I loved Evelyn. Her parents thought I was her imaginary friend. As she got older, they didn’t like her talking about me as much. She only talked to me when we were alone in her room. She was just about my age—almost eleven—when she told me they were moving to a different town. Her dad had a new job. I wanted to go with her, but I couldn’t.

Everyone always leaves me. I’m not even mad about it anymore. That’s just how it is.

The next family that lived in the house didn’t have kids. They ignored me, and I didn’t have the courage to haunt them. The family after that had a teenager, and he talked to me for a few weeks before deciding I was boring. Not even scary, that’s what he said. What’s the point in a ghost if it’s not even scary. 

He was mean. I was glad when they moved.

After him, there was another year when nobody wanted to buy the house. And then the people who did buy it were hardly there. It was disappointing. They did make some nice improvements to the place. The upstairs bathroom is way better, and I love the railing they put on the stairs. But then they moved, too.

And I was alone again. No one wanted to buy my house. I spent a lot of time wondering why I was even here, and if there was a way to stop being a ghost. If there is, I haven’t figured it out yet. I worked on manifesting some more, and I got pretty good. It took me seventy years, but I got to the point where if you weren’t paying attention, you might look at me and believe I was a living kid.

Too bad it’s not real. Maybe if I keep trying for another seventy years, even I won’t be able to tell the difference.

At least my luck turned around again last year. A new family moved in. A lady and two boys. They were both older than me, but not by all that much. Nicky was only twelve when I met them. I was scared to appear to them at first, but they all seemed so _nice_ I had to give it a try. And they listened! Even the mom. They saw me, and they listened, and they didn’t run away. It was like Evelyn. Nicky let me hang out in his room whenever I wanted. It’s not the room that used to be mine, but I don’t care about that anymore. We’d stay up late talking, and sometimes even if I wasn’t manifesting he’d talk to me. That was the best feeling in the world.

Nicky told me all about his dad dying, and fighting with his older brother, and how scared he was to be starting school in a new town. He told me about how mean the kids were to him at his old school, and how he was worried it’d be just the same here. That it was something wrong with _him_ , not the town. I told him he was the coolest kid I’d ever met. I wasn’t lying. He was better than Evelyn—he was like _Caroline_. He taught me all the things he liked, and he joked with me and included me. We told each other our secrets.

And since his mom and brother knew about me, he just kept talking to me if one of them came into the room. After a few weeks, they started talking to me, too. Teagan, the mom…she’s like my mom. She can’t sing or play piano, but she always makes sure everyone has something fresh-baked to snack on, and even when she’s busy she makes time to check on me. Dave and Stan (Nicky’s brother and Teagan’s boyfriend) weren’t as interested in being friends, but they at least didn’t seem scared of me. After a while, when they realized I wasn’t going anywhere, they started talking to me too.

Nicky showed me how to run searches on the internet. Using just his little phone screen, he tried looking up my family. He couldn’t find much, so he asked Teagan for help. She sent a message to someone in the town historical society, and she and Nicky spent hours at the library that weekend. A few weeks later, they gave me pages of information, all printed out on paper and wrapped up like a present. Mostly just names and numbers and places, though there were a few pictures.

They told the story of what happened to my family. My first family, I mean. Caroline, Eddie, my parents. Nieces and nephews I never knew I had. Great nieces and nephews. Second cousins. And they didn’t stop there. They’d found information on Susy and Evelyn, too. For the first time in my afterlife, I had some idea of what happened to the people I loved after they left my house.

I know they knew it was a nice thing to do. I don’t think they understood just how much it meant.

Teagan and her family set a place at the dinner table for me, even though I can’t eat. They ask me about what I want to do. When Stan’s niece and nephew visited last summer, my family didn’t ditch me to play with them. Well, not any more than anyone would ditch their little brother, anyway. That’s what I am to them now. Nicky’s even said it. His brother.

So now for the first time in almost a hundred years, I’m part of a family again. It’s not perfect. I wish I wasn’t dead. And Dave can be a real pain in the butt sometimes. And when they go to school and work, I’m still stuck at home. And it’s not the family I was born with.

But it’s my family, and my afterlife, and I’ll take it.

**Author's Note:**

> Someone in my family is a big Horace fan, so I thought I'd give the ghost in the family a little bit of backstory and love. Just a little throwaway, really, and practically nothing to do with Gravity Falls. But I might as well throw it up here with the rest.


End file.
